Tanks

And at night

After dark the Steel Stacks (see earlier post) are lit, this time of year, for Christmas. If you look closely you will see stairways and walkways up into the works, providing a self-led tour of the parts and process of steel making. Unfortunately it was 20F and windy while we visited so I did not attempt the tour.

I shot this as a four exposure series and back home attempted an HDR composite. It was not to my liking. I created a better result by taking the best single exposure and working on local adjustments. I have found the dynamic range of most modern cameras often provides all that is needed, even in difficult exposure situations.

Steel Stacks

Bethlehem Steel ceased operations 1995 and left behind a large industrial site including these blast furnaces. Although there was talk of tearing them down to recover the site, it was eventually decided to leave the stacks as a backdrop for a redevelopment effort. It is now a music, arts and festival site for residents and tourists. The project was in part aided by the approval and development of a casino and hotel on part of the property. It appears to have been a successful transformation despite the sometimes detrimental downside that a casino can bring.

Changing gears

Today is my last day. I have been employed for over 50 years (including summer and part-time work while in school). 

I guess it is time to quit. 

Retirement is going to be a big adjustment for me, as I guess it is for most. I have never taken employment for granted. That paycheck was always received with gratitude and as a measure of my value. Now I will need to pay myself.

But it is on to a new chapter, with more time for personal projects and finding opportunities to help others.

PS: I leave it to TFG to tell us about the pictured object.

Gate G

A peculiar way to get into the New York State Fair. Not sure what's going on in there, or if whatever it is, is still going on. A cooling tower and some big rusty pipes makes for a quite a scene. 

Tank

Sweet

This is perhaps my favorite picture from our Toronto weekend with its angles, unusual construction and colors. The unaware passerby also adds to the image, but the title comes from the fact that the industrial building pictured is the Redpath Sugar Refinery on the waterfront.

And we were in Toronto to see Sir Paul McCartney, who at age 73 was still able to provide two and half hours of continuous entertainment to 16,000 of his fans. A very good concert in my opinion from one of the music worlds greats. And that is pretty sweet too.

Big tires

Life on the river

We spent five days on the Yangtze River during our travels in China. Over those days we did not see one pleasure craft. There were a few other cruise ships but mostly we encountered many dozens of freighters and barges. This is the super highway of southern China.

The barges were burdened with stone and gravel and coal. A few were loaded with bright yellow sulfur. There were cranes and loaders and payload transfers between ships.

The weather was dark overcast and moist, which added the the feeling of this being a peculiar means of travel.

When a bad picture is a good picture

This picture has been a fixture on my various work desks over the last twelve years. What is curious, however, is that no one has ever asked my why I have a photo of a water tower on display.

It was shot on September 25, 2002, with my first digital camera, a Canon Powershot S100 (the first one made back in 2001... there is another camera of the same name and model made in 2011!). The little camera was capable of two-megabytes of jpeg quality, and to make matters even more challenging, this is a small crop of the original exposure. The photo was ratty enough that I have now run it though a Topaz plug-in to mask the limitations of the low quality image. The resulting photo has a retro, almost postcard quality that I enjoy... but I don't think anyone would ever claim it is a technically good picture (click the picture to see it bigger and badder).

So why do I keep this picture on my desk?

It is to me a reminder that good things can happen even when you become convinced that they will not.

I had lost my job of almost 30 years due to a company reduction-in-force... a layoff. Being fifty years old and having only worked for one company for almost all of my career, I did not have much luck finding new employment. In fact after searching for almost seven months I became convinced that no respectable employment would ever be offered to me.

But in time a good opportunity did materialize. This photo was shot across the parking lot of the new office during my first week on the job. I was really lucky.

My new job lasted for ten years, and then though another twist of fate, I was again out of work before I was ready to retire. Once again luck smiled on me and I found another great job which I have been at for almost two years now.

So this little picture has been a totem for me, reminding me that good opportunities are always possible, with a bit of luck, and sufficient persistence.

Self storage

Not posting much these days is really a result of cold weather and limited daylight... or more likely it is just that I am being lazy.

Anyway, I dug back into my archives and found this image from April 2011 that was never posted (probably for good reason). This historic warehouse was transformed into a self storage facility, which in a way seems to be a shame from a "lets value the past" standpoint, but then again perfectly consistent with its original purpose. It is certainly better to keep it vital than to neglect and let it fall into disrepair.

Which maybe holds a message for me... don't neglect the picture making, or else fall into disrepair.

Valve protection

Oil

An oil refinery is not a common site, but it is a facility that we all rely on to power our cars and sometimes heat our homes. I would guess this is a pretty small refinery by industry standards. Located in Warren Pennsylvania it is an independent company known as United Refinery.

Warren is a relatively small town with a long history with oil that started in late 1800's. Numerous wells produced crude here, but it did not last long. Now most of the input for this plant arrives in a pipeline and departs in the familiar gas tanker trucks.

I am amazed at the complexity, and the photo only shows a portion of the plant located on the Allegheny river near the confluence with Conewango Creek.